How Big is the Sky?
by KatZen
Summary: A son's question causes a father to reflect.


**Disclaimer: ********The Thunderbirds do not belong to me. They are the property of Gerry Anderson and his affiliates. No money is made from this. It is purely for enjoyment purposes.**

How Big is the Sky?

_A son's question causes a father to reflect. _

It was the holiday from hell, and they hadn't even left the country yet. Jeff huffed impatiently as he thought back to the moment where everything had gone wrong.

Well, no, he wasn't going to blame Lucille for gently nudging him into booking this holiday. They lived in Florida and her family lived across the pond in the UK, and Jeff knew that his wife missed them terribly at times. Besides, they hadn't even seen the new baby yet, and it wasn't fair to deprive his sons of his maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.

But the trip so far had been a nightmare. The first flight from Fort Lauderdale to New York had been delayed because of a mechanical failure, and that delay meant that the family had missed their connecting flight to London. Consequently, they had been bumped onto the next flight with five available seats. A seven hour wait-over time with four small children in a large airport was not an experience Jeff wanted to repeat again. Not after this time. He couldn't wait for the day where he made his millions and could afford to own a private jet so that he didn't have to endure the trials and tribulations of commercial flying with his family. It was a millet dream, that much he was sure of, but it was a comforting thought and Jeff didn't want to let that go.

The younger two were fine – after all, Gordon was strapped to Lucille in his baby carrier and Virgil had his backpack with a wrist strap Jeff held so that the two year old could toddle about without straying too far from his parents. But the older two boys… Jeff had stopped trying to figure out whether they had horns or halos for the flights for the better part of five and a half years (ever since Lucille and he had started travelling with Scott as a baby). Both Scott and John had horns locked onto their heads for this trip. Johnny had refused to eat his Happy Meal for lunch and had screamed and raged when Lucille had taken away his toy until he had finished his chicken nuggets. In the chaos of it all, Jeff had taken his eyes off Scott for one minute, which was not a good idea. As soon Jeff had calmed the blond four year old down (and handed him back the toy after Johnny had finally managed to swallow the last of his nuggets), Jeff turned to his oldest boy, only to find that he had, well, vanished.

_That_ had been a harrowing hour and a half for Jeff, and he was sure he had sprouted more than a few grey hairs, somewhat prematurely. And people had told him that Gordon was going to be the troublemaker – how wrong were they? Lucille had managed to make him feel guiltier with just one look. Jeff had assumed the role of the hysterical parent, frantically searching high and low for his five year old while Lucille had stayed with the other boys and doled out relevant information to airport authorities. Always the forward thinker, Lucille had snapped photos of the boys before they left for their travels, just in case something like this happened. Jeff had laughed at that, telling her that she was tempting fate, but now he was extremely thankful that she had ignored him and taken the photos anyway.

Oblivious to the sheer terror he had instilled in his father and mother, Scott had been found at one of the gates, nose pressed against the glass so that he could see the planes taxi to the runway, take off and land as well. Jeff bellowing at him in public – purely driven by the scare he had – hadn't helped matters either, as Scott had burst into tears when he realised Daddy had abanboned him.

"You lost me, Daddy! You don't care about me, Daddy!" Scott had wailed into Jeff's shoulder as Jeff picked him up and carried him back to where Lucille was, conveniently forgetting that he was the one who had run away in the first place.

Somehow, Jeff and Lucille ensured that they had all made it onto the plane, clinging to what was left of their sanity. Gordon was strapped to Lucille while Virgil and Johnny slumbered on either side of her, heads nestled on her sides. The day seemed to have tired them out, finally.

_Shame the same can't be said for Scott,_ Jeff bitched internally, mind transporting him back to the moment when he'd discovered Scott was missing. Even that hadn't managed to tire him out, and he was as wide awake as he could be.

Scott, ever the bossy five and a bit year old, wanted the window seat just behind the wing and he knew exactly what he had to do to get what he wanted. At the check in desk, Scott had turned on the puppy dog eyed looked and smiled so that his dimples showed. There was no female (except for Lucille) who could resist that combination, and the agent behind the check in counter wasn't an exception to the rule.

_Only five years old, and already charming the ladies. I'll have to talk to him about that once we get home._

"Daddy," Scott asked, tugging on Jeff's sleeve. "How big is the sky?"

The little voice drew Jeff out of his thoughts. "What did you say, Scott?"

"How big is the sky?"

Jeff paused, thinking about it. Scott had asked the question all pilots had wondered about at some point in time. How big was the sky?

Back on the farm, back as a teenager, the sky seemed endless. The blue yonder stretched out from one end of the horizon to the other. The sky represented freedom, a taste of the life he could have only dreamed of. But where did the sky end? Where did the Earth begin? Jeff couldn't answer that with his feet firmly planted on the ground; the line between the two was blurred and distorted.

There were times when the sky wasn't big enough, times when Jeff had had catastrophic failures in flight and his plane was plummeting down towards the ground at breakneck speed. The insignificant dots on the ground became larger and larger, an obstacle course that was designed to kill him, if the fall didn't kill him first. Times when his parachute hadn't opened, and he could feel the pressure crushing his spine his chest, liquefying his insides. The sky was miniscule compared to him as he powered through it in his space module two years ago. Invincible, immortal, surviving in parts of the atmosphere where the air was so thin he should have asphyxiated; nothing could take him down, not even the invisible monsters in the sky.

The sky was a temperamental variable, friend one minute, foe the next. Jeff had seen it all before; in the Air Force, where comrades left their home country alive, but returned in a coffin, all thanks to the sky not being big enough. The sky was a one way ticket, providing a one-way passage on a journey no man in his prime wanted to take. At least, not at that age anyway.

Conversely, there were times when the sky was cavernously huge. The first time Jeff had to leave his wife behind as she cradled their 4 week old firstborn to complete a tour of duty with the Air Force was the first time he truly resented the sky, as it swallowed him whole, dragging him away from the two people he loved most in the world. There were times when the sky was a perilous thing to traverse across, a mute soul destroyer in disguise. The sky was Jeff's other wife, he loved it immensely, but there were times when it infuriated the hell out of him

"I mean," Scott continued, worrying his bottom lip as he stared up at Jeff with intense cobalt blue eyes. "In case we fall."

Jeff suppressed a chuckle, knowing that laughing at Scott's five year old fear would not earn him a Parenting of the Year Award; Lucille would have his guts for garters if he laughed at that, and she was already mad at him for losing Scott. What Scott needed was quiet words of reassurance, no matter how trivial the fear was.

"We won't fall, Scott," Jeff smiled, ruffling his son's hair. "The sky's big enough for that."

"But what if we do?"

"We won't. You won't fall, and I won't fall."

"Daddy promise?" Daddy promises was the only thing that would tell Scott that something was a certainty. After all, Daddy had never lied to him or broken a promise before.

Jeff nodded. "It's a Daddy promise."

A gentle hum kicked into the background, and they could see the blades of the turbines revolving. Time to taxi to the runway, Jeff knew. There was no turning back now.

"Son, no one knows for sure how big the sky is. But it doesn't matter. Now, how about you sit back, relax and let's go fly!"


End file.
